Shattered Glass
by kittyfantastico
Summary: Glass, like love, is easily shattered." SV reflective angst. Post-The Frame. Please RR!


This is set somewhere after The Frame (that is the ep where Lauren's dad dies, right??). Not immediately after, a day or two after.  
  
Thank you, spichik453, for betaing!!!!  
  
Shattered Glass 1/1  
  
Glass, like love, is easily shattered. This is what she muses as she bends, with a small sigh, to examine the glittering mess on her tiled kitchen floor. She holds her hand out in front of her, resting it gently on her knee as she squats above the mass of jagged shards. Her fingers curl up into something resembling a bowl, and she slowly picks up the tiny remnants of a wine glass. It had always looked sturdy enough. It had never failed to carry the burden of a full glass of wine, yet here it was, no longer anywhere near recognisable as anything more than broken remains. Piece by piece, she lifts the cruelly beautiful fragments between her finger and thumb, always careful that they don't carve their sparkling edges into her skin.  
  
Eventually the pieces become too small for her to pick up, so she rises, taking what she already has, and discards them into the bin. As she sweeps the almost invisible pieces that are left off the floor with a dustpan and brush, she thinks again of how strong she had imagined the glass to be. It had been perfect, if a simple wine glass could ever accomplish such a state; not a scratch or blemish to be seen. But one slip of her fingers while washing up and smash! It was gone.  
  
These days, she can't help but see meaning where there is none; it's one of the downsides of living alone. She realises that the broken glass is the perfect metaphor for her relationship with Vaughn. She has lost count of the number of times their love has seemed to be growing stronger, only to be thrown against a wall, floor, door, table, window, somewhere, anywhere, and be shattered into a million glistening, tiny pieces.  
  
But sometimes the pieces are big, she thinks, miserably. Sometimes they are big enough that you can see what they used to be, can see your own reflection in the smooth, polished wreckage. Those are the pieces you have to be careful with, because even though they look hopeful, as if there is a chance they can be glued back together, made somehow stronger and longer- lasting, these are the pieces that stab and cut and tear the most. On the whole, she's not sure if she prefers things to shatter hopelessly, or simply to break.  
  
Everyone always used to say that she and Vaughn were "meant to be," she remembers, pouring the grains of crushed glass away like sugar. That was before Lauren, of course. Now people don't say anything about them; at least, nothing that she wants to hear. When they see the entangled trio together, they shoot sympathetic glances at each other, at Sydney, at Vaughn, at Lauren. They smile sadly, sad only because if Sydney and Vaughn can't make true love work, then they themselves stand no chance. But the three points of the triangle struggle ever onwards, and try to make the best of the situation. It is a triangle that can never hope to be measured, for its dynamics are constantly changing. She and Vaughn grow closer together, and further apart, as he also does with Lauren; each edge and point of the ill-fated triangle softens for a while, only to be suddenly sharpened by an undetectable alteration. Life in the Ops Centre is like skating on thin ice, playing Russian Roulette, or, she thinks wryly, washing up.  
  
Things have been harder than ever since Lauren's dad died. Foolishly, she had let herself believe that things were going to get better; she should have known that fate would not be so kind. She returns to the sink, and simply stands there, staring down at the place where the glass was. There are still a few twinkles here and there, indicating that she hasn't quite cleared it all up, but she doesn't move to brush them away. Her mind returns, as ever, to memories of life before waking up in Hong Kong. She has spent hours, sometimes even a whole day, just sitting, reflecting, reliving. But the memories are now so well rehearsed that it takes no time at all to flick through them, and she thinks bitterly that she had Vaughn really spent very little time together as a couple; what right has she to long for him like this when their relationship had been in such an early stage? They hadn't even said those all-important words, the words that promised to heal every wound and prevent the sun from ever setting. If she had known what would happen to her, to them, she knows without any trace of doubt that she would have told him the first chance she got. But fate had other plans. Still, she thinks, a warning would have been nice.  
  
Her mind rattles on, scarcely pausing to allow each thought to fully form before moving on to the next. Set on a course for destruction, she continues like a train with broken brakes and thinks she realises the worthlessness of her relationship with Vaughn. Who is to say that he married Lauren because she was gone? Why does she think their relationship would have lasted much longer even if she had still been around? Why didn't she tell him she loved him? Why didn't he tell her? Were they too scared because they felt it so deeply, or were they too scared because they didn't? What if everyone was wrong about them, and their love really was nothing special, just a dim beacon of light among so many brighter stars? What if their love really hadn't been as strong as she's imagined?  
  
Angrily, she plunges her hands into the sink to finish washing up. She finds that the water has long been cold, and pulls the plug to drain it away. She watches it swirl down the plug-hole. The remnants of the bubbles from the washing-up liquid fizzle and die. She stares out of the window at the last scraps of sunlight clinging to the sky. One thought is printed in bold on her mind.  
  
Love, like glass, is easily shattered. 


End file.
